Tobacco
History, Statistics, and Health
February 2008
Introduction
• Nicotine, the main drug in tobacco, is one of
the most heavily used addictive drugs in the
WORLD.
• Young adults aged 18 to 25 reported the highest
rate of current use of any tobacco products in
2004. Most of them smoked cigarettes.
• Once hooked, nicotine addiction is extremely
difficult to overcome.
• Studies find that people can become addicted
to nicotine with as little as 3 cigarettes.
Tobacco Forms
• Tobacco and its by-
products can be
ingested into the body
in 3 main ways:
• Smoking cigarettes
• Chewing tobacco
• Second-hand smoke
Cigarettes
• Cigarettes are the most common way to ingest nicotine, the
main addictive chemical in tobacco. Here are some of the
other toxic chemicals found in cigarettes:
Chewing Tobacco
• Chewing tobacco comes in shredded tobacco leaves that users put
between their cheek and gum.
• What Can Chewing Tobacco Do to Me?
• It causes bad breath and yellowish-brown stains on your teeth. You'll
also get mouth sores (about 70% of spit tobacco users have them). Other
consequences of chewing and spitting tobacco include:
• cracking and bleeding lips and gums
• receding gums, which can make your teeth fall out
• increased heart rate, high blood pressure, and irregular heartbeats, all
leading to a greater risk of heart attacks and brain damage (from a
stroke)
• Oral cancer. This means cancer of the mouth and can happen in the lips,
the tongue, the floor of the mouth, the roof of the mouth, the cheeks, or
gums. It's been medically proven that long-time use of chewing tobacco
can lead to cancer.
Second-hand Smoke
• The Environmental Protection Agency says secondhand smoke can
cause lung cancer in adults and greatly increases the risk of
respiratory illnesses in children.
• There are over 4000 chemical compounds in secondhand smoke;
200 of which are known to be poisonous, and upwards of 60 have
been identified as cancer-causing agents.
• Lung Cancer: 3,000 non-smokers DIE each year from secondhand
smoke.
• Children who breathe in secondhand smoke are more likely to
suffer from dental cavities, eye and nose irritation, and asthma.
• Continual exposure to second-hand smoke has been shown to
nearly double the chance of heart attack.
Health Hazards
• Smoking is a major cause of stroke.
• Every eight seconds, a person dies from
tobacco use somewhere in the world. That is
about 5 million deaths annually.
• Tobacco use is expected to kill one billion
people this century unless serious anti-smoking
efforts are made around the world.
• Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body,
causing many diseases and hurting the health of
smokers in general.
Diseases Related to Smoking
• Abdominal aortic aneurysm,
• Leukemia,
• Cataracts,
• Cervical cancer,
• Kidney cancer,
• Pancreatic cancer,
• Pneumonia,
• Periodontitis,
• and stomach, bladder, esophageal,
laryngeal, lung, oral, and throat
CANCERS,
• Chronic lung diseases,
• Coronary Heart and Cardiovascular
Diseases,
• as well as reproductive effects and
sudden infant death syndrome.
• THAT IS OVER 18 TYPES OF
DISEASES FROM SMOKING!
More Statistics….
• Cigarette filters are made of very thin fibers of a plastic called
cellulose acetate. A cigarette filter can take between 18 months and
10 years to decompose.
• Smoking causes about 90% of lung cancer deaths in men and
almost 80% in women.
• There is enough nicotine in 4 or 5 cigarettes to kill an average
adult if ingested whole. Most smokers take in only 1-2 milligrams
of nicotine per cigarette, with the rest burned off.
• Worldwide, 1 in 5 kids age 13 to 15 smoke cigarettes. Don’t be a
statistic.
• Women who smoke only have 70% of the fertility that women who
don’t smoke have.
Many of these diseases are
preventable if you….
Media Campaigns
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4xmFc
rJexk
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl5gBJ
GnaXs
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7abIkin
2mA8&feature=related
Sources
• http://www.theantidrug.com/drug_info/drug
_info_tobacco.asp
• http://quitsmoking.about.com/cs/secondha
ndsmoke/a/secondhandsmoke.htm
• http://quitsmoking.about.com/od/tobaccost
atistics/a/SGR2004.htm
• http://quitsmoking.about.com/od/tobaccost
atistics/a/tobaccofacts.htm